(gentle music) - Good morning, everyone.
(tools whirring) Welcome to the tree house.
It's a little bit of construction going on
because our house flooded,
and so they're working on the house still.
I'm up in the tree house,
which was not affected by the flooding.
I'll put a playlist up somewhere
so that you can, if you're curious about the flooding
and what's been going on with the house remodel,
that's where you'll find all that information.
Today, I want to talk to you about my health.
I'm gonna give you a little health update
because I'm feeling much better,
and I wanna tell you about it.
Usually with these health updates, I'm like,
I feel terrible, but today, I feel great,
and I want to talk about that
and share that really good news with you.
For those of you who have not been following
along on this journey,
I got diagnosed with chronic idiopathic urticaria,
which is a fancy Latin-y way of saying,
"You got hives that we can't get rid of and for no reason."
Or, at least a reason that we can't figure out.
And they have tried to figure out
what has been causing the hives.
I've tried figuring it out,
and by they, I mean my allergists.
I have a team of allergists.
I also have a skin doctor.
What are those called, a dermatologist.
He actually biopsied, you can still see the mark there,
one of the hives and tested it and tried to figure out
if it was being caused by something
that could be diagnosed that way.
And I've tried a bunch of medicine,
and it's been this battle where my face
is like swollen up, I have hives from head to toe,
the soles of my feet, the palms of my hands,
just had these really deep hives that were really painful.
Sometimes they'd feel like a bruise,
like a really bad bruise.
Sometimes they'd feel like burning,
like a burn after you've burned yourself.
And then sometimes they really, really itched,
and that happened a lot at night when I was trying to sleep.
I tested out of a bunch of different medication. (laughing)
I had bad side effects to some of the medication.
In the past, I tried something called Xolair,
which is a biologic injection.
They inject it in both arms.
You go in once a month, they inject you with it.
And, the first time I tried it,
I had a big outbreak right after.
They tried to give me the second injection early,
and they also took me off of some other meds
to, like, change things
because I was getting really bad nightmares.
And, when I did that combination of things,
my lips swelled up and they were like,
okay, we can't risk you having, like,
an anaphylactic response to the Xolair,
so we're gonna take you off of that
and we're gonna try a different biologic.
And I tried that for months, it did not work.
And, within that time, I went off of this medication.
Again, I had gotten back on it
and tried to get off it again,
and when I tried to get off it again, my lips swelled up.
So then, in talking with the doctors, we decided,
maybe my lip swelling was the result of me going off
of one of the medicines that I was on
and not the fact that I was trying Xolair.
So, we decided to give Xolair a second chance
and it is working.
I think that's what's working,
I don't know if it's that or some other
outside influence, some coincidence,
but it does seem to be working right now.
And I gotta say, it feels really, really good.
I still have hives from time to time.
Usually, it's just one or two and they itch.
Like, I'll have like maybe three on each arm
or something near my ankles.
But, I'm really clear right now, really clear,
and I have more good days than bad.
I'm still on a lot of medication, but the hope is,
we get the hives down for like two months,
like no hives for two months.
And then we can start pulling back
some of that medication and seeing if that works. (laughing)
If nothing comes back, then we can stay off the medication.
Otherwise, I gotta get back onto the medication
that I stopped last, so that's sort of the idea
of where we're going with this.
Currently, I take a Xyzal in the morning and at night,
so that's kind of already doubled the amount
of antihistamine you're supposed to take,
or that's on the bottle, the dosage on the bottle.
But my allergist assured me that that is safe,
and so that's what I've been doing.
I've actually been doing that for a long time.
I also take Pepcid in the morning and at night.
I think I take 40 milligrams in the morning and at night.
Then I take something called Doxepin,
which helps with itchiness,
and I take that in the morning and at night.
I also take something called Montelukast,
which is a generic form of something,
I think, called Singulair.
And that one is a black label medication.
It is the one that I had had gone off of
and my lips swelled up.
And, at the same time, I started Xolair,
and then got back on it and went off it again,
and my lips swelled up.
So, I think that's the medication that's like,
when I'm on it, I'm okay,
but when I get off of it, I have some unusual face swelling.
But, that one has side effects,
that one can give you dark thoughts,
which I don't have currently,
and nightmares, and the nightmares are gruesome
and gross and stick with you throughout the day.
So that one I take in the morning
and the idea is that those types of effects
will have worn off by the time I go to bed.
And now I just have really weird dreams.
So I don't have the dark thoughts
and I don't have the gruesome nightmares as much anymore,
but I did both times that I went off that medication.
That's the reason I went off of it in the first place.
So, I was kind of off and on with that one.
I'm on it right now, and I feel fine,
and I do have more dreams than I typically do.
And they're usually somewhat stressful,
but I wouldn't say that they're, like,
nightmares or bad dreams.
And then I go in once a month for my Xolair injections.
I've had two injections so far,
and it usually takes, like, three or four doses,
from what I understand, to really see if it's working,
but I already feel way better.
I don't have as many hives.
I'm not having any of the dizzy feeling that I had
on some of the other medication that I had been on.
So, I think we've found like a good grouping
of medicines for me to be on,
for the time being, until we can start tapering off
some of the other medicines that I've been on.
I feel like I have more energy.
I feel like I can get up in the morning.
Whereas before, when the kids woke up,
or the alarm clock woke up,
I would be like, I honestly, I can't,
I'll stand up and I'd be like, I have to lie down.
I have to sleep again, and I don't feel that anymore.
Now, I feel like, okay, I can get up.
I can manage the day, I can help out, which feels great.
I'm a worker, I like to do things and get things done,
and have projects and build guitars and, you know,
play with my kids, go on a walk with my dog,
and I couldn't get to that point with anything.
(laughing) It was really hard.
And now, I'm going on the daily walks again
with Rue, our dog, and with the kids.
Like, I stroller the kids around,
I'll go on a walk with Jessica and I feel capable of that,
and I feel good about it.
I feel like I'm just breathing in life.
Like, I just breathe it in,
and I'm like, (inhaling heavily) yeah, all right,
let's do this, and it really kind of affected
us being able to post regularly on this channel.
I want to post our memories here because I love going back
and watching them again with my kids.
Things like the family camp that we go to every year,
Luke doesn't know that, Luke doesn't remember that.
Duncan barely remembers going to these family camps.
So, to be able to like, watch those
leading up to us going again,
'cause we're gonna go real soon to the family camps again,
and enjoying that and getting them, like, pumped
and ready to go have these adventures with us
has been so great.
And so, I like documenting our life and, like,
putting it here and sharing it with you
and also having it here for myself.
And I felt so bad that I couldn't get them up.
I really appreciate all the people that are here watching,
and I know you're all super supportive
and I get nice comments like,
"Don't worry about posting, it's okay."
But I still feel like you've invested time into this,
and I want to give that back, but even more than that
is that I want those memories, I want 'em stored,
I want 'em posted and easy for me to access,
and my kids to access as they get older.
So it's been really hard to get things edited
and even to shoot things, I couldn't get out of bed.
I couldn't like, I just didn't have the motivation
to, like, pick up the camera even.
And I just kind of got the basic, like,
the main things that I didn't want to miss,
like our kids' birthdays and stuff. (laughing)
That's what we've been posting for a while,
and now I feel like I can get back into the swing of it
and be posting stuff that I wanna be posting.
And I can't wait, we're gonna go on our annual family trip
to the family camp, where we do the ropes course
and the archery, I'm so excited to jump back into
that stuff now and to put together the videos
about 'em and post 'em up here.
I'm really excited about what's gonna happen there
and getting the guitar channel started back up again.
And the house, like, the house is coming together,
you can hear 'em working in the background.
We're close to moving in.
We've already started moving some of our stuff over,
and we are close to the final look,
the final, this is what it looks like.
I'm so excited to make that video.
It's been a long time coming.
I'm excited to be back in the house
and using our appliances and cooking
and sharing time as a family in that space.
It's so beautiful, and it's really coming together,
and I'm excited to share that with you as well.
So, that is my health update for June.
I wanna say thank you guys so much for watching
and for all your lovely supportive comments.
It's really been nice having my family and my close friends,
you know, lift me up with with their support,
both like tangibly and emotionally.
And it's been really great to also have
that extra support from you guys, just feeling that love
and that encouragement and positivity,
I really, really appreciated that
throughout this whole process.
And so I wanna say thank you to you and yeah, that's it.
I'm gonna get outta this tree house
and go play with my kids now, so.
Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next time.